Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  For now, anyway.

  Dan turned onto a little side street that dead-ended in a pasture fence made of peeled willow poles held close together by wires. Unlike the poles on the slow truck, these were weathered gray, crooked, no two alike. There was no garage for the truck, not even a lean-to.

  Without waiting for Dan, Carly climbed out of the vehicle, shouldered her big purse, and looked around curiously. The cloudless sky was huge. The closest houses were several large pastures away. Snow covered the fields in shady places and melted on the dirt streets. Right now the wind was a gentle sigh sliding down the rugged mountains, but her experience with the Rocky Mountains told her that during storms the wind would be wild, powerful. Except for some ruined outbuildings that were relics of past farming days, Dan’s little house faced the wind and mountains alone.

  Then Carly realized the house wasn’t really alone. The cottonwood that spread thick bare branches over the house and a lot of nearby pasture was company of sorts. The sort she liked. Though the tree couldn’t talk, it had seen centuries of history pass with the seasons. It was deeply rooted in the past, growing in the present, and its strong arms reached toward the future spring.

  Ignoring the snow and slush under her boots, she walked toward the tree, put her bare hands on its rough, deeply seamed bark, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dan was standing close to her, hair dark against the sky, watching her with eyes the color of the future spring.

  She laughed self-consciously. “Did I mention that I like trees?”

  “All of them? Or just the special ones, like this one?”

  “You feel it, too?”

  “It’s why I rented the house, leaky roof, bad plumbing, and all. I felt something here. Calm, maybe. I don’t know. I just know that being around the old cottonwood tree made me feel…better.”

  She tried to think of another man she knew who would have sensed the different life of the tree so clearly, much less admitted it aloud. With a sigh she let her anger at him slide away.

  “Not mad anymore?” he asked.

  She jumped. “You read me way too well.”

  He smiled, lifted the heavy purse from her shoulder, and headed for the front door. “C’mon. My chili isn’t as good as Mom’s, but it will separate your stomach from your backbone.”

  “I’m going to ask questions,” Carly warned.

  “That’s how I know you’re breathing.”

  “Are you going to answer them?”

  “I don’t know.” He put the key in the lock, slid the heavy deadbolt aside, and pulled on the old wrought-iron handle.

  “You spend a lot of your time not knowing,” she said.

  “It’s one of my specialties.”

  He put his hand between her shoulder blades and nudged her into the living area. The furnishings were minimal and obviously worn. There was a small, rump-sprung sofa whose threadbare upholstery was mostly covered by a Navajo blanket that looked as old as the little adobe house. Nearby there was a homemade side chair built of twisted wood and covered by another old blanket. Metal floor lamps whose finish was either corroded or worn away completely stood out like weary flagpoles.

  Her eyes took in the tiny corner fireplace, a card table, and two plastic lawn chairs. Nearly bald cowhides had been thrown on the warped wooden floor. More old, worn-shiny blankets hung on the walls. The colors weren’t faded so much as they were from a time before intense commercial dyes, when weavers made their own subtle colors from local plants. There was enough clutter to make everything cozy.

  The windows were wired for security.

  So was the front door.

  Dan watched Carly’s face as she looked around the modest room. He waited for her to ask questions.

  “For a man who’s not interested in the past, you sure surround yourself with it,” she said.

  “The condos in town are too noisy. Besides, this was furnished.”

  The look she gave him said that she wasn’t buying what he was selling.

  He put her purse on the sofa. “Give me a minute before I show you the rest of it.”

  Curious, she watched while he opened a door at the back of the room, opposite the tiny kitchen. The room beyond was nothing like the front room. Newspapers, magazines, journals, and what looked like computer printouts or abstracts were stacked on every surface, including the floor. There was a wall of electronic equipment that could have come off a spaceship. The bed was new, neatly made except for stacks of papers on the blankets, and oversize. It covered two-thirds of the room.

  Dan went through his bedroom quickly, grabbing printouts here and there, stacking them, and putting them in a dresser drawer. He shut down computers, turned off some other machines she couldn’t identify, picked up one of them, and sat on his heels close to a long metal box the size of a footlocker. It was the silvery color of spun aluminum or titanium and had a digital lock with two keypads, one numbered and one with a fingerprint reader as well as numbers.

  Even though Dan’s back was to her, she could tell he used both pads to unlock the box. When the lid opened, the metal itself was almost as thick as her finger. It would take more than a hacker to get into that box without the combination. It would take a welding torch. Or a bomb.

  She wondered what Dan had that needed such high-tech protection, but she didn’t ask. Why bother? He wouldn’t answer.

  He locked the case and stood.

  “Ready for visitors?” she asked.

  “Close enough. The bathroom is opposite the bed. There’s no door, because there’s no room to open or close one. When you want to use the facilities, just close the bedroom door. And don’t fiddle with the electronics, please. You can’t get anything on that wall to work without passwords and such.”

  “And if I asked you why you need such elaborate electronics on ‘vacation,’ you would say…?”

  “I’m a game freak.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You mentioned something about two beds. Unless there’s one hidden in the refrigerator, we’re one bed short.”

  He reached under the big bed and pulled out something that looked like a deflated Zodiac. He plugged it into the wall, hit a button, and what sounded like a vacuum cleaner started forcing air into the mattress. One minute later, a twin-size mattress teetered on top of all the papers stacked on the bigger bed.

  “After I fold up the card table and stack the chairs in the kitchen, this fits in the corner by the fireplace,” Dan said. “Warmest bed in the house.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the living area, measured the space, and said, “Works for me.”

  “No, it works for me.”

  She turned back so fast her hair bounced. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re way too big for that mattress.”

  “I’ve slept on worse.”

  Carly thought of his occasional hesitations, a slight favoring of his left leg. The last thing he needed was to sleep on the floor, no matter what kind of inflated mattress was underneath him.

  “Let me put it this way,” she said. “I sleep on the inflatable or I get a hotel room.”

  “Aren’t you worried about rats on the floor?”

  She wasn’t buying that, either. “I’ll make sure you empty your pockets before I go to bed.”

  He just shook his head.

  “Speaking of which,” she said, “what does the sheriff have against you?”

  “I was a teenager when he was a deputy.”

  “So? A lot of people were teenagers twenty years ago.”

  “Some Sandoval boys jumped me. They ended up hurt. I didn’t.”

  “Some? How many?”

  “Not enough to get the job done.” Dan pulled a fist-size plug on the mattress and began deflating it to get it out of the way.

  “What did the deputy do to them?”

  “It was their word against mine. Deputy Montoya was dating a Sandoval girl at the time. Ended up marrying her.”

  “Well, that just sucks.”

  He shrugged. “It’s
a small town. I didn’t belong to any of the factions—Anglo, hispano, or Native American. I was a smart-mouthed pain in the butt.”

  She watched while Dan deftly rolled the mattress, forcing air out the big valve with every motion of his strong hands.

  “Okay, you and Montoya have a history,” she said. “That’s no reason for him to accuse you of putting a gutted rat on my pillow.”

  “Look at it from his point of view. If I didn’t do it, someone at the governor’s household did. Montoya won’t win any prizes making headlines at the governor’s expense.”

  “I still say it sucks.”

  “It’s just the way it is.” He bent and shoved the deflated mattress back beneath the bed.

  “So I’m guessing your personal motto is ‘Life’s unfair, get over it.’”

  “Good guess.” He stood and looked at her, enjoying the rich color of her hair against the whitewashed adobe walls. “You ready for some chili?”

  “I’m ready to go kick Montoya right in his fat badge.”

  Dan hooked his arm around Carly’s neck and pulled her close. “Can I watch?”

  “Don’t you want to help me?”

  “I’d never get between you and Montoya’s fat badge.”

  Before she could grumble any more about the sheriff, she found herself at the card table eating a bowl of chili con carne with tortillas on the side. A bottle of Mexican beer appeared at her elbow. She grabbed the beer, poured green sauce over the chili, and dived in.

  Dan sat, dumped sauce on his own bowl of chili, and finished it before she was halfway through hers. He refilled his bowl and cleaned it again while she was mopping up the bottom of her bowl with a tortilla. Then he settled back to enjoy the last swallows of his beer.

  “You don’t ever need to call your chili second-best,” she said, leaning back with a satisfied sigh.

  “Is this where I tell you Mom gave me the recipe?”

  “That’s what I figured.” Carly sipped a little more beer. “When did you figure out that the Senator’s daughter was your grandmother?”

  His eyelids lowered slightly. “I always knew. Just like everyone else in the town.”

  “Including the Sandovals who jumped you?”

  Dan shrugged.

  “Does Winifred know?” Carly asked.

  “She never said anything one way or the other.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You obviously like her.”

  Dan spun the clear beer bottle between his hands. “I didn’t care. I still don’t.”

  “She’s your blood relative.”

  “We’re hardly close enough to be shirttail cousins.”

  “But—”

  He kept on talking. “Winifred’s sister’s legally disowned daughter is my mother’s mother,” he said sardonically. “Yippee-do. Talk about a close relative. I’ll have to be sure and turn up at the family barbecue.”

  “What about your grandfather?”

  “Which one?”

  “Is John related to the Quintrells or the Castillos?”

  “No. He’s from Idaho.”

  “Right.” Carly glanced at Dan. He looked bored and irritated in equal parts, but at least he was answering her questions. “Who is your maternal grandfather?”

  “I don’t know. My grandmother never married anyone.”

  “What about on your mother’s birth certificate? Who was listed as father?”

  “No one.”

  Carly drank a swallow of beer. “What does local gossip say?”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “That she was a junkie and a slut who started screwing around at thirteen and got knocked up when she was fifteen.”

  Carly winced but kept on asking questions. She told herself that she needed to know about the people of the area before she could do justice to Winifred’s family history. And she knew she was lying to herself. Sure, local history would be helpful, but it was a need to know Dan’s personal history that was driving her.

  “No particular boyfriend?” she asked.

  “Three of the Sandoval brothers. If you believe what the boys yelled at me before they jumped me, she liked more than one at a time. Or maybe she was too whacked out to care how many climbed on.”

  Carly swallowed hard. “Why would young boys know about something that happened to your grandmother?”

  “The smaller the town, the longer the memory.” When Carly started to ask another question, Dan cut her off. “My turn. Tell me about your parents.”

  She looked at the line of foam sliding down the inside of the beer bottle. When people asked about her family, she usually said something meaningless and changed the subject. But she couldn’t. Not now. Dan wasn’t just anyone, and he hadn’t liked talking about his family any more than she was eager to talk about her lack of family. If she was going to see where their mutual attraction led, she’d have to do some sharing of her own.

  “I don’t know anything about my biological parents,” she said after a moment. “The couple who adopted me, Glenn and Martha May, were fifty-five and forty-eight when I came into their lives.”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed again. “How old were you?”

  “I think I was taken immediately from my birth mother. My parents never said.”

  “And you never asked?”

  “Oh, I asked. They said it didn’t matter, I was way too young to know what was going on at the time, my home was with them, they loved me.” She shrugged. “The usual things adopted children hear when the adoptive parents don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Was it a formal adoption, through a licensed agency?”

  “No. That’s why the records stayed sealed even after I turned twenty-one.”

  Dan nodded. From what he’d seen of Carly, she wouldn’t have taken her parents’ reluctance about details as the final word. She would have pursued it on her own. And she had.

  “Blank wall?” he asked.

  “Completely.” She grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong. My curiosity about my biological parents wasn’t a slam at Martha and Glenn. They loved me as much as any parents could.”

  “How about you? Did you love them?”

  Carly looked surprised. “Of course. They were kind, careful to introduce me to a wide range of experiences, and committed to my education. As I got older, they taught me about the genealogies that were their life’s work.”

  “But it was the past that compelled them, not the present or the future.”

  “You’re quick. It took me years to figure that out. They were fascinated by ancestors, by the past. Both Glenn and Martha taught at the university—European history and Latin. They were a well-matched couple.”

  Dan thought about a much younger Carly, bright and curious and energetic, raised by a couple old enough to be her grandparents, people whose life work was the past. “Any siblings?”

  “No.” She smiled wryly. “I think I was enough of a handful. They didn’t need more.”

  He clicked the beer bottle lightly against his chili bowl. “Did they ever say why they adopted you? Had they always wanted kids?”

  “They never said, but…” Carly sure had wondered more than once. She ripped off a bit of tortilla and nibbled. “Martha was the last of her family in the U.S., an only child raised by only children. It was the same for Glenn. No siblings, no aunts or uncles, no cousins closer than fourth or fifth. Nothing but a genealogy narrowing down to one name.”

  “Onlys raising onlys.”

  She nodded. “It was one of the many things they had in common. But Glenn and Martha couldn’t have even one child. So one day they got me, and here we are.”

  “Were they pleased that you loved the past as much as they did?”

  Carly nibbled some more. She wasn’t hungry. She just needed something to do with her hands besides twist a strand of hair around her finger. “I think so. We never talked about it in those terms.”

  “So what did you talk about, the rise and fall of the
Roman Empire?”

  She laughed. “We talked about genealogical sources, how to trace female ancestors versus male ancestors, history at the time of their grandparents and the seventh generation in the past. That sort of thing.” She leaned toward him eagerly. “I loved that part the best, figuring out what people wore and ate in fifteenth-century England or Italy or Spain. I loved thinking about the consequences to ordinary people of the violent infusions of Viking and Dane blood and culture into a local population, of the Crusades, of the plagues and famines, of the adventurers and colonists and the ones who stayed home, of how the new generations of a family changed and forgot each other, of how much fun it is to find an American’s fourth cousin in County Clare, then listen to them when they finally get together and share family photos and memories that bridge time and the ocean.”

  “Connection,” he said.

  “Exactly. So many people take it for granted or don’t even care that they’re an entry on a much larger genealogical chart,” she said, spreading her arms, “a chart that could span centuries and countries and weave together the whole of—” She stopped abruptly as her right hand smacked against the wall and sent a piece of tortilla flying.

  Dan captured her left hand before it collided with his nose. He laced his fingers through hers and held her hand against his thigh. Safer that way. Felt good, too.

  “Sorry,” she said, flushing as she bent to pick up the piece of tortilla with her free hand. “I get a little carried away when I talk about my work.”

  “I like your enthusiasm.” He had felt the same way about his work. Once. When he’d quit the State Department and joined St. Kilda Consulting’s affiliation of loose cannons, he’d been enthusiastic again. Then the narcotraficantes who wanted him dead had opened fire in a crowd. Three schoolchildren and a nun had died. He’d survived. He wondered if God was happy with the body count. Dan sure wasn’t. “How did Winifred find you?”

  “She always has the TV on in the background when she’s with Sylvia. One of the yak-yak shows was interviewing me about a family history I’d just published. She was curious enough to call the show. I sent her a clipping from a recent newspaper article, along with the book I’d published for the family I’d just finished working with.”